I think I’m finally going to just take the leap of faith and buy myself an Ipod. This is at least partially motivated by the monster amount of flying I’m about to do, here to Scotland and back. Blech. Be nice to have something to listen to on the way!

I also recently tried out a few programs to shrink movies down so I could watch them on my PDA. I have a Dell Axim X51v, which runs Windows Mobile 5.0. It’s a neat little gadget (I like gadgets) and has proved itself to be fairly useful, although I suspect I overpaid for what I really needed.

I used to use a paper day planner to keep phone numbers, notes, addresses, schedule, etc. It worked very well as long as I was religious about carrying it around and making my notes and so forth; it really took a lot of getting used to, though, because I was a disorganized (and late) guy.

The problem is that I kept losing the stupid thing. The last time was really like a punch in the groin; I left it on top of a display right at the checkout counter at Home Depot. I got to the car, realized it wasn’t in my hands or in the bag, ran back to the store… gone. In probably 5 minutes, maybe less. Some asshole picked it up and didn’t return it, probably hoping for money or something. Jerk- nothing but a Sears card and lots of stuff that had meaning to ME, but nobody else.

Anyway, with the trip I’m trying to plan some entertainment. I figure between the Ipod and the PDA playing some movies, plus probably sleeping off large amounts of beer on the way home, I should be good to go.

The Ipod is something I’ve kicked around for a long time. I’ve got over 8,000 MP3 files and am going to do a merge with a guy at work and grab a LOT more soon. The thing that’s held me back is Apple’s insistence on putting in a battery which is essentially NOT user-replaceable. I mean, you can do it, but it’s a big pain in the butt and you’re liable to damage the thing. Why do companies build products like that? ARRGH!

But the thing is that functionally, everything else on the market isn’t really superior in other factors. Price wise, Apple has kept the Ipod pretty competitive with other units the same size. They all use MP3s, and then usually the other guys use some other file scheme (typically WMA) that gives them protection against copying and such (or so they think- I know there’s programs out there to strip the protection schemes from Apple’s ITunes-purchased files). I don’t really care about file format thanks to being an MP3 guy.

The Itunes store isn’t really a big deal to me, since the other guys have other stores and such that give you more or less the same thing. What the other guys do offer in many cases is the battery, it can often be replaced or even sometimes uses standard AA or AAA batteries (a big plus in my book).

What Apple definitely DOES have going for them is that they’ve sold a bajillion Ipods and are still selling them like mad, so there’s a healthy aftermarket for accessories- a cable to hook into my car stereo, battery packs for the exterior, cases, you name it. The other guys do not have that and it hurts them, in my view.

So I guess I’ll give it a shot. Hey, it’s just 400 bucks, right? Man, I hope I keep the thing on a closer leash than I kept my day planner.